Millions of people worldwide face financial ruin; their assets wiped out because of a catastrophic illness or accident that saddles them with staggeringly high health bills they are unable to pay.

This nightmare scenario rarely, if ever, occurs in countries that have universal health coverage. Such systems insulate people from the financial disasters that occur in countries where national health schemes do not exist.

“Today, about 100 million people fall into poverty because of health expenditure,” said Rudiger Krech, World Health Organization director for health systems and innovation. He told VOA that every country, poor and rich alike, can afford universal health coverage.

“It is not just a matter of money, but of political will, of political choice. So, you can afford health coverage for everyone, even if you are not one of the most affluent countries in the world,” he said.

For example, he said that relatively low-income countries such as Cuba and Costa Rica have developed good health systems; while in the United States, one of the world’s richest countries, “people have to pay huge amounts of their salaries and their income for health services.”

“We call these catastrophic health expenditures because people are losing their fortune because they had a big accident or an open-heart surgery,” he said. “So, this still pulls people into poverty.”

Half of world lacks full coverage

The World Health Organization reports at least half of the world’s population lacks full coverage for essential health services. More than 800 million people, or nearly 12 percent of the world’s population, spend at least 10 percent of their household budgets to pay for health care, WHO said. In 2015, it said the world spent an eye-watering $7.3 trillion on health, representing close to 10 percent of global Gross Domestic Product.

WHO is on a mission to make it possible for all people and communities to receive the health services they need without suffering financial hardship. As such, it is using this year’s World Health Day, April 7, to promote the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal that calls for the adoption of universal health coverage in 90 percent of the world’s countries by 2030.

“I think this is a goal that people all over the world should aspire toward,” said Shih-Chung Chen, Taiwanese minister of health and welfare.

“I will not say that it will be achieved by 2030,” Chen told a group of visiting journalists, “but I think all countries should have the willingness to try to achieve this, and that is why we want to participate in the World Health Assembly. That would allow us to contribute toward that goal.”

Last year, China blocked Taiwan from participating in the WHA as an observer and, so far this year, Taiwan has not received an invitation to attend.

Taiwan’s system

“I think that in order to ensure that health is a basic human right, no country’s experience should be left out,” said the Taiwanese health minister. “We are extremely proud of our universal health coverage system. I think this would be a very important way for us to share with the world.”

Taiwan’s single payer National Health Insurance, a compulsory program that was launched in 1995, provides comprehensive, affordable coverage for the island’s more than 23 million inhabitants. The government calculates “a family of four pays roughly $100 U.S. per month as the premium.” This comes to about 2 percent of the average household income. Average life expectancy in Taiwan has risen to 80 years, on a par with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

“More than 85 percent of the people in Taiwan report very high satisfaction with our national health Insurance,” Chen said.

Low health expenditure

The health minister told VOA that Taiwan’s total health expenditure is 6 percent of GDP, the lowest in the world, compared with more than 16 percent for the United States.

“The U.S. is entirely capable of providing universal health care to its citizens,” he said. “However, because the U.S. has a multitude of systems in place that have been there for a long time and there are a lot of stakeholders involved, it would be a bit difficult. In addition, the U.S. places a lot of importance on freedom of choice.”

Chen said the world could learn a lot from Taiwan’s health insurance program. Unfortunately, he said Taiwan was not able to help because it is barred from participating in international organizations such as the World Health Organization.

Krech told VOA it was the United Nations, not WHO, that decided whether Taiwan could be included in international health matters.

“We are talking to Member States and obviously Taiwan is not a Member State. But, it is Chinese Taiwan and Chinese Taipei and, therefore, it is under this “One China” policy.

“That does not bar us from discussing with representatives of Chinese Taipei, at all,” he said. “We have regular exchanges. We see what is happening.”

This story was written by Lisa Schlein.
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The science behind the grain that feeds half the world may have taken a big leap forward. 

Scientists are reporting the biggest improvements in rice productivity in decades.

If the results hold up in further tests, it could greatly increase supplies of a critical food staple at a time when the global population is growing rapidlyResearchers found a version of a gene that increased the number of branches in the flowering part of the plant. 

The team used conventional breeding to introduce this gene version into five rice varieties. The new strains produced from 28 to 85 percent more rice than their parents. 

That’s a huge increase, says University of Arkansas rice breeder Xueyan Sha.

“If we can achieve, say, 6 percent, we can probably consider it a great achievement,” Sha said.

Sha was not part of the new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports. 

He cautions that it’s a small-scale, controlled experiment, and it’s not clear how the results will hold up in farmers’ fields. 

Rice yields have not improved much since the big gains of the “Green Revolution” of the 1960s, aimed at boosting grain production.

Experts say big increases in food production will be necessary to feed the additional 2 billion or so people expected on the planet by 2050.

Not all rice varieties tested by the scientists produced the same hefty gains. That’s another reason for caution, notes rice geneticist Shannon Pinson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“There’s something exciting here,” Pinson said. “I don’t think it’s as exciting as Green Revolution caliber.”

New varieties will be available to farmers in two to four years. 

This story was written by VOA’s Steve Baragona.
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About 1 percent of the world’s population lives with the mental condition called bipolar disorder, characterized by swings between elevated and depressed moods. In most cases, timely interaction with psychotherapists, family and friends can alleviate the symptoms. Researchers in Denmark say modern technology can help by keeping track of a patient’s symptoms and summoning help quickly when needed. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Humanitarian groups in South Korea are using the ocean current to send needed food and information from the outside world into impoverished regions of North Korea. 

On Ganghwa Island in the Yellow Sea, located just south of the inter-Korean border, a group of North Korean defectors and volunteers with humanitarian groups this week launched aid packages containing rice, medicine, U.S. dollars and banned information. The ocean’s current, they say, will carry the sealed bottles to the cities and towns along the west coast of North Korea.

“If we set the date and time right, it will get there 100%,” said Park Jung-oh, with the Kuen Saem Education Center in Seoul that helps defectors from the communist North assimilate into life in the democratic South. 

Bottles vs balloons

Park said the ocean current is a safer and more reliable delivery system than launching balloons into the wind, a method that other North Korea activist groups have used to send packages containing mostly South Korean movies, television dramas and news critical of the Kim Jong Un government that is prohibited in the North.

In 2014, North and South Korean forces exchanged gunfire when an activist group from the South launched balloons full of leaflets into the North. That incident nearly disrupted plans at the time to hold a reunion for families that have been separated by the division of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II.

The activists have received little attention this year from either Seoul or Pyongyang as inter-Korean relations are improving and diplomatic talks appear to be progressing to peacefully resolve the North’s nuclear threat.

This week, the group involved in floating bottles of aid to the North sent over 500 kilograms of rice and 400 computer memory sticks full of South Korean movies and foreign news programs that are also not permitted in the North. In the last three years they have performed this operation 53 times, and will come out again in about 15 days. 

The United Nations reports that over 40% of North Korea’s population is undernourished. Conditions in the country have improved since the 1990s when failures in the communist agricultural system led to a severe famine and millions died of starvation. But food shortages are still common and there are concerns that sanctions on most exports, meant to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program, are increasing poverty and hunger in the country.

Defectors

Many of the aid activists are defectors who escaped poverty and repression in North Korea, and have become advocates to bring international attention to the widespread human rights abuses still going on in their homeland.

Jung Kwang-il, a North Korean defector who recently met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, has included a copy of the U.S. president’s fiery address last year to the United Nations as part of the information package being sent.

In his speech, Mr. Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if the Kim government continues to threaten the world with its nuclear weapons development program. He also strongly criticized the North Korean leader for the pervasive starvation and oppression in the country.

“So the message that we are sending to them is that the U.S. President knows that you are living in these harsh conditions,” said Jung, who leads a North Korean human rights activist group in Seoul called No Chain.

The North Korean defectors involved in this unconventional aid effort have raised money and donated their time to help those most in need in the country they left behind.

“It is very difficult when doing it, but after sending it I feel proud,” said Kim Yong-hwa, who is also a defector-turned-activist with the North Korean Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea in Seoul.

Some of their support comes from Christian churches that want to send bibles into the communist North, where religious teaching is also highly restricted.

A 2014 U.N. human rights report documented a network of political prisons in North Korea and numerous cases of state sponsored murder, torture and rape. In the U.N. Security Council, China, North Korea closest ally, is believed to be holding up a motion passed by the General Assembly to refer the Kim Jing Un government to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
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Virtual reality, or VR, is finding more applications as the technology matures. It is no longer only used for gaming or entertainment. One Austin-based company is using VR to improve health by making cardiovascular workouts more fun. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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The nation’s chief doctor wants more Americans to start carrying the overdose antidote naloxone to help combat the nation’s opioid crisis and save lives.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams is expected to speak about the new public health advisory Thursday morning at the National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta.

In a news release, Adams said he hopes those who are at risk, as well as their friends and family members, will keep the antidote on hand and learn how to use it.

“Each day we lose 115 Americans to an opioid overdose, that’s one person every 12.5 minutes,” Adams said in a statement. “It is time to make sure more people have access to this lifesaving medication, because 77 percent of opioid overdose deaths occur outside of a medical setting and more than half occur at home.”

Fatal opioid overdoses

More than 42,000 Americans suffered fatal opioid overdoses in 2016, his statement said.

Naloxone can restore a person’s breathing after it is injected or sprayed in the nostrils, quickly bringing overdose victims back from near-death.

The drug, which, is often referred to by the brand name Narcan, is available over the counter in most states and is regularly used by first responders across the country. A two-dose pack of Narcan is among many options available and the drug is increasingly covered by insurance, according to The Network for Public Health Law, a nonprofit that helps government agencies.

As of July 2017, all 50 states have passed laws improving naloxone access, the nonprofit said.

A safety net?

Maine’s Republican Gov. Paul LePage has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the push, arguing that naloxone doesn’t treat addiction and merely discourages people from seeking treatment by essentially offering a safety net if they do overdose.

Proponents, however, argue that greater access to naloxone doesn’t draw people to illegal drug use or foster an addiction.

“To manage opioid addiction and prevent future overdoses, increased naloxone availability must occur in conjunction with expanded access to evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder,” Adams said in a statement.

Adams’ recommendation for more people to possess naloxone comes a month after Philadelphia’s health department urged residents to do the same.

Before his current role, Adams had been Indiana’s health commissioner, where he promoted needle-exchange programs aimed at stemming the spread of diseases among intravenous drug users.
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Attorneys in Baltimore are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that struck down as unconstitutional an ordinance requiring pregnancy centers notify patients if they don’t offer abortion or birth control services.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January that the ordinance unconstitutionally compelled speech by Christian-based Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns Inc., which opposes abortion.

Justices ruled the ordinance wasn’t tailored to serve the city’s interest in preventing harm to women’s health through deceptive advertising by abortion opponents.

The Daily Record reports the city’s request filed last week says the ordinance doesn’t violate free speech. Instead, it lets patients know which services are available.

The center has until April 30 to respond to the city’s request for a Supreme Court review.

 
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“Nightmare bacteria” with unusual resistance to antibiotics of last resort were found more than 200 times in the United States last year in a first-of-a-kind hunt to see how much of a threat these rare cases are becoming, health officials said Tuesday.

That’s more than they had expected to find, and the true number is probably higher because the effort involved only certain labs in each state, officials say.

The problem mostly strikes people in hospitals and nursing homes who need IVs and other tubes that can get infected. In many cases, others in close contact with these patients also harbored the superbugs even though they weren’t sick — a risk for further spread.

Some of the sick patients had traveled for surgery or other health care to another country where drug-resistant germs are more common, and the superbug infections were discovered after they returned to the U.S.

“Essentially, we found nightmare bacteria in your backyard,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“These verge on untreatable infections” where the only option may be supportive care — fluids and sometimes machines to maintain life to give the patient a chance to recover, Schuchat said.

The situation was described in a CDC report.

Bugs and drugs are in a constant battle, as germs evolve to resist new and old antibiotics. About 2 million Americans get infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year and 23,000 die, Schuchat said.

Concern has been growing about a rise in bacteria resistant to all or most antibiotics. Last year, public health labs around the country were asked to watch for and quickly respond to cases of advanced antibiotic resistance, especially to some last-resort antibiotics called carbapenems.

In the first nine months of the year, more than 5,770 samples were tested for these “nightmare bacteria,” as CDC calls them, and one quarter were found to have genes that make them hard to treat and easy to share their resistance tricks with other types of bacteria. Of these, 221 had unusual genes that conferred resistance. The cases were scattered throughout 27 states.

“Even in remote areas” this threat is real, because patients often transfer to and from other places for care, said Dr. Jay Butler, chief medical officer for the state of Alaska and past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Others in close contact with the infected patient then were tested, and 11 percent were found to be carrying the same superbugs even though they were not sick. This gives the bugs more of a chance to spread.

What to do? CDC suggests:

—Tell your doctors if you recently had health care in another country.

—Talk with them about preventing infections, taking care of chronic conditions to help avoid them, and getting vaccines to prevent them.

—Wash your hands regularly and keep cuts clean until healed.
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Health care in the United States doesn’t have to take place in a doctor’s office or clinic building. There are some 2000 mobile health clinics around the country, delivering medical, dental, pre-natal and pediatric care, preventive screenings and more. These vans go where the patients are – libraries, schools, grocery store parking lots, especially in low-income communities. As Faith Lapidus reports.
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Scientists in developing nations plan to step up research into dimming sunshine to curb climate change, hoping to judge whether a man-made chemical sunshade would be less risky than a harmful rise in global temperatures.

Research into “solar geo-engineering,” which would mimic big volcanic eruptions that can cool the Earth by masking the sun with a veil of ash, is now dominated by rich nations and universities such as Harvard and Oxford.

Twelve scholars, from countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Jamaica and Thailand, wrote in the journal Nature this week that the poor were most vulnerable to global warming and should be more involved.

“Developing countries must lead on solar geo-engineering research,” they wrote in a commentary.

‘Pretty crazy’

“The overall idea [of solar geo-engineering] is pretty crazy but it is gradually taking root in the world of research,” lead author Atiq Rahman, head of the Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies, told Reuters by telephone.

The solar geo-engineering studies would be helped by a new $400,000 fund from the Open Philanthropy Project, a foundation backed by Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook, and his wife, Cari Tuna, they wrote.

The fund could help scientists in developing nations study regional impacts of solar geo-engineering such as on droughts, floods or monsoons, said Andy Parker, a co-author and project director of the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative.

Rahman said the academics were not taking sides about whether geo-engineering would work. Among proposed ideas, planes might spray clouds of reflective sulfur particles high in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“The technique is controversial, and rightly so. It is too early to know what its effects would be: it could be very helpful or very harmful,” they wrote.

Doubts expressed

A U.N. panel of climate experts, in a leaked draft of a report about global warming due for publication in October, is skeptical about solar geo-engineering, saying it may be “economically, socially and institutionally infeasible.”

Among the risks, the draft obtained by Reuters says, are that it might disrupt weather patterns, could be hard to stop once started, and might discourage countries from making a promised switch from fossil fuels to cleaner energies.

Still, Rahman said most developed nations had “abysmally failed” so far in their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, making radical options to limit warming more attractive.

The world is set for a warming of 3 degrees Celsius (5.7 Fahrenheit) or more above pre-industrial times, he said, far above a goal of keeping a rise in temperatures “well below” 2C (3.6F) under the 2015 Paris Agreement among almost 200 nations.
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Some whales are taking jazz riffs to new depths.

For the first time, scientists have eavesdropped year-round on the songs of bowhead whales, the little-heard whales that r oam the Arctic under the ice. They found that bowheads — the bigger, more blubbery cousins of the better known humpbacks — are more prolific and downright jazzier than other whales. 

“Bowhead whales are the jazz singers of the Arctic. You don’t know what they’re going to do. They inject novelty,” said University of Washington oceanographer Kate Stafford.

184 bowhead songs recorded

Over three years a single underwater microphone captured 184 distinct bowhead whale songs, according to Stafford’s study in Wednesday’s Biology Letters. That’s remarkable because there are probably only a couple hundred males in an area between Greenland and Norway to make the songs, Stafford said. 

Stafford and her colleagues couldn’t track specific songs to individual whales to know for sure, but given the wide variety of songs they think each male has a different song, and that they likely change from season to season. 

In contrast nearly all humpback males sing versions of the same song every winter, Stafford said. “Humpback whales are classical music singers. They make long elaborate songs but their songs are really ordered and almost predictable.” 

Only the male sings

Until now, biologists would hear only snippets of bowhead songs in other Arctic areas. They have many recordings of humpback songs because there are more humpbacks and they travel much further south.

Scientists think only male bowheads sing and that they are singing for sex, improvising to try to attract females with the best rendition of songs. Stafford said she was reminded of Miles Davis on his “Bitches Brew” album. Though she admitted bowhead music isn’t for everyone. 

“I find the songs to be quite beautiful, but some people compare them to fingernails on a chalkboard,” Stafford said. “They’re scream-y. They’re yell-y and they’re quite funny.”

‘Huge step forward’

Bowheads — which can live to be 200 years old and are almost 60 feet long — start with very high notes, modulate their tune quite a bit and at times make two completely different sounds at the same time.

“We don’t know how they do that,” Stafford said. Humans can’t, but some birds can, she said.

Syracuse University biology professor Susan Parks, who wasn’t part of the study, praised the research as “a huge step forward” in learning about bowhead songs, showing surprising novelty and variety.

“The diversity of signal types uncovered by this study suggests that something very different is going on with bowhead whale song,” Parks wrote in an email.

‘Woo-woo-woo’

One of Stafford’s favorites makes repeated riffs of “woo-woo-woo” but with differing modulations. She’ll often just turn the songs on her cell phone and bliss out.

“These guys are great mimics. They can imitate ice,” Stafford said. “They make the nuttiest songs.”
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Dozens of rare footprints belonging to dinosaurs made some 170 million years ago have been discovered on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, offering an important insight into the Middle Jurassic era, scientists said on Tuesday.

“The more we look on the Isle of Skye, the more dinosaur footprints we find,” said Dr Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences.

“This new site records two different types of dinosaurs — long-necked cousins of Brontosaurus and sharp-toothed cousins of T. rex — hanging around a shallow lagoon, back when Scotland was much warmer and dinosaurs were beginning their march to global dominance.”

The find is globally important as it is rare evidence of the Middle Jurassic period, from which few fossil sites have been found around the world, the university said on its website.

The footprints were difficult to study owing to tidal conditions, the impact of weathering and changes to the landscape, it added. But researchers managed to identify two trackways in addition to many isolated footprints.

They used drone photographs to make a map of the site while other images were collected using a paired set of cameras and tailored software to help model the prints.

The study, carried out by the University of Edinburgh, Staffin Museum and Chinese Academy of Sciences, was published in the Scottish Journal of Geology.
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Scientists have detected the most distant star ever viewed, a blue behemoth located more than halfway across the universe and named after the ancient Greek mythological figure Icarus.

Researchers said on Monday they used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to spot the star, which is up to a million times more luminous and about twice as hot as our sun, residing 9.3 billion lights years away from Earth. It is a type of star called a blue supergiant.

The star, located in a distant spiral galaxy, is at least 100 times further away than any other star previously observed, with the exception of things like the huge supernova explosions that mark the death of certain stars. Older galaxies have been spotted but their individual stars were indiscernible.

The scientists took advantage of a phenomenon called “gravitational lensing” to spot the star. It involves the bending of light by massive galaxy clusters in the line of sight, which magnifies more distant celestial objects. This makes dim, faraway objects that otherwise would be undetectable, like an individual star, visible.

Peering back in time

“The fraction of the universe where we can see stars is very small. But this sort of quirk of nature allows us to see much bigger volumes,” said astronomer Patrick Kelly of the University of Minnesota, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“We will now be able to study in detail what the universe was like — and specifically how stars evolved and what their natures are — almost all the way back to the earliest stages of the universe and the first generations of stars,” Kelly added.

Because its light has taken so long to reach Earth, looking at this star is like peering back in time to when the universe was less than a third of its current age. The Big Bang that gave rise to the universe occurred 13.8 billion years ago.

’15 minutes of fame’

The star spotted in this study is formally named MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star-1, but its discoverers dubbed it Icarus, who flew so close to the sun that his wings fashioned from wax and feathers melted, sending him plunging fatally into the sea.

Kelly said he preferred the nickname Warhol, after the American artist Andy Warhol, owing to the star’s “15 minutes of fame” following its discovery.

“No one liked that, except for one other person, so it ended up Icarus,” Kelly said.
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SpaceX has launched a used supply ship on a used rocket to the International Space Station.

The Falcon rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday, hoisting a Dragon capsule full of food, experiments and other station goods for NASA.

The Dragon and its 6,000-pound shipment should reach the space station Wednesday. The station astronauts will use a robot arm to grab it.

It’s the second trip to the orbiting lab for this particular Dragon, recycled following a visit two years ago. The Falcon’s first-stage booster also flew before — last summer.

SpaceX has combined a recycled Dragon and a recycled Falcon once before. The company aims to reduce launch costs by reusing rocket parts.

The space station is currently home to astronauts from the U.S., Russia and Japan.
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When Cameroonian medical doctor Conrad Tankou won the top health award at an international innovation competition, he breathed a sigh of relief. 

Winning the $25,000 prize at the Next Einstein Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, last week was the culmination of years of struggle.

“Sometimes, I doubted I would get this far,” 30-year-old Tankou said. “We’ve come a long way. It’s the first time this project is actually getting any recognition. So, many people didn’t believe in it in the beginning, and up ‘till now, some people are still doubting.” 

WATCH: Next Einstein Forum

​Tankou, a general practitioner based in Bamenda in northwestern Cameroon, led a team to invent what he calls GIC Med. It’s a portable digital microscope that connects to a smartphone to remotely scan for cervical cancers for medical analysis. About 7,000 cases of cervical cancer are discovered yearly. The disease is the second most frequent cancer among women in Cameroon. 

While creating his technology and seeking support, Tankou said he faced resistance from medical professionals. There was also the challenge of an unreliable internet, which he said is necessary for today’s scientists. Only about 25 percent of Cameroon’s population has Internet access, and the connection is prone to blackouts. 

Some of the blackouts are political. The Cameroonian government has periodically shut down the internet in Anglophone regions, including Bamenda, where citizens are accusing the Francophone-dominated government of marginalizing English-speaking people. One blackout last year reportedly lasted a record 93 days. 

Tankou said he also had to confront what he described as a “sad” mindset.

“There is mindset here in Africa where we don’t believe in the ability of another African to solve our problems. We have doubts that solutions in Africa can come from an African. We expect solutions to come from the West,” he explained. 

Tankou is determined to make his technology available to help save lives. He said the Next Einstein Forum (NEF) was the best platform to showcase his innovation.

Africa has been left behind

Created by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) with the underlying belief that “the next Einstein will be African,” NEF brings together the largest gathering of African scientists to discuss innovations in climate change research, health and data technology to solve local problems. The first was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2016, where nearly 1,000 people convened. 

More than 1,600 people gathered in Rwanda last week for the second edition. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame opened the forum. 

“For too long, Africa has allowed itself to be left behind, but that’s starting to change, as we see in the important work on display at this forum,” Kagame said in his opening address.

Kagame’s government has heavily pushed education in science-based fields.

According to the World Bank, less than 2 percent of total global scientific research output comes from Africa. Some of the barriers are cultural.

“There’s also this old mentality prevailing in Africa where elders are respected more than youth. So, young people are not always supported. They have to find their own way,” said Joel Gasana, who is in his final year as a medical student at the University of Rwanda.

Gasama received $5,000 from an organization affiliated with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Nigeria-based Tony Elumelu Foundation awarded him another $5,000 grant. 

The mobile app he created to help HIV patients keep up with their treatments lost to Tankou in the competition.

Rachel Sibande, a Malawian scientist who devised a tool to generate electricity from maize (corn), won in the “climate smart” category. 

She noted that 90 percent of Malawi’s population is not connected to the national power grid. 

Sibande, 32, said Africa is left behind when it comes to scientific research and innovation, due to a lack of funding, lack of opportunities for collaboration, few incentives and an educational system that does not enable students to think critically. 

Abdoulaye Diallo, whose artificial intelligence project won in the “deep tech” category, said he did not think he would have been able to develop his technology in his native Guinea. He created it in Canada, where he has access to world-class labs as a university professor. But he admits that many scientists in Africa do not have such opportunities.

Steps of progress 

These days, several initiatives are springing up to boost research-based science in Africa. A report jointly issued by the World Bank and Elsevier, the world’s largest publisher of academic journals, revealed that between 2003 and 2012, African researchers more than doubled their production of research in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

At this year’s NEF, Elsevier and AIMS announced the launch of The Scientific African, a first-of-its-kind pan-African, peer-reviewed, open-access publishing journal dedicated to amplifying the global reach and impact of African research. News of the launch has generated positive buzz on social media over the past few days.

Scientists in Africa have long felt they were at a disadvantage simply by being in Africa, but NEF hopes to change that. The next edition will be in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2020. 

NEF is setting up a $1 million fund to encourage scientific breakthroughs in Africa. 
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Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has released a specially-bred group of critically endangered yellow-spotted bell frogs into the wild. Yellow-spotted bell frogs were thought to have become extinct until a chance discovery a decade ago. It allowed scientists to breed a so-called insurance population’ in captivity to help the species recover.

Historically, yellow spotted-bell frogs were found in two separate highland ranges in the north and south of New South Wales state in eastern Australia.

But disaster struck in the 1970s following an outbreak of an infectious disease that affects amphibians around the world.

For 30 years there were no recorded sightings of yellow-spotted bell frogs and scientists thought they were extinct.

However, a small group of these rare frogs was found near the New South Wales town of Yass in 2009 on the Southern Tablelands. Researchers moved quickly to harvest eggs and they became part of a so-called insurance population. It has been a success.This week experts from Taronga Zoo in Sydney released 200 juvenile frogs back into the area near Yass in an attempt to re-establish a wild population.

Michael McFadden is a supervisor at the zoo.

“In the Northern and Southern Tablelands this species used to be extremely common up until the late 1970s and at that time the species almost went extinct over a couple of years. So it disappeared, it was thought to have gone extinct. The reason for that decline was due to the introduction of an introduced pathogen called chytrid fungus. Unfortunately for this species they showed very little immunity and as a result they were wiped out over a period of one or two years,” he said.

Insurance populations’ of endangered Tasmanian Devils have also been bred in captivity in Australia. In the wild, the world’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial has been devastated by a contagious facial cancer that was first recognized in the 1990s. A small number of animals bred in captivity have been released into the wild, fueling hopes this iconic species can recover.

There are hopes, too, the yellow-spotted bell frogs can do the same.

Chytrid fungus causes chytridiomycosis, which has been described by scientists as one of the most devastating wildlife diseases ever known. It has devastated frog populations in Australia, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.
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Sixteen African scientists competed in Rwanda last week for a chance to solve some of the most pressing problems in their communities. Chika Oduah reports for VOA from Kigali, which hosted the 4th annual Next Einstein Forum March 26-28.
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A defunct Chinese space lab met its expected end early Monday morning as its remaining fragments plunged into the South Pacific.

China’s Manned Space Engineering Office said the Tiangong-1 spacecraft “mostly” burned up in the atmosphere.

Any pieces that failed to disintegrate during the fiery trip back to Earth fell harmlessly into the ocean. 

It took about two hours for the craft burn up once it hit Earth’s atmosphere.

There had been predictions parts of the space lab would land in the South Atlantic with some pieces posing a very small threat to people on the ground

Tiangong-1, was the size of a school bus and weighed eight and a half tons. 

Tiangong-1, which means “Heavenly Palace” in English, was the largest manmade object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a decade.

It was launched in 2011 and served as an orbiting laboratory for manned Chinese space missions until officials determined its lifespan was complete. It was taken out of service in 2016. 
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Scientists are monitoring a defunct Chinese space station that is expected to fall to Earth sometime this weekend — the largest man-made object to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a decade.

The head of the European Space Agency’s debris office, Holger Krag, says China’s Tiangong-1 space station likely will fall to Earth Sunday.

Krag said it still not yet known where the space station will hit Earth, but said it would be extremely unlikely for anyone to be injured when it does.

“Our experience is that for such large objects typically between 20 and 40 percent of the original mass, of 8.5 tons, will survive re-entry and then could be found on the ground, theoretically,” he said.

“However, to be injured by one of these fragments is extremely unlikely. My estimate is that the probability to be injured by one of these fragments is similar to the probability of being hit by lightning twice in the same year,” Krag added.

China’s first space lab, Tiangong-1 — or “Heavenly Palace 1″ — was launched in 2011 as a facility for testing docking capabilities with other Chinese spacecraft and to explore the possibilities for building a larger permanent space station by 2023.

Chinese astronauts visited it several times flying aboard the Shenzhou spacecraft.

It was scheduled for a controlled de-orbit and eventual crash into the Pacific Ocean, but in September 2016 China’s space agency conceded it had lost contact with the station.

Krag, says the 8-and-a-half ton craft will re-enter the atmosphere at a speed of 27,000 kilometers per hour.

He said the space station is expected to fall between the areas of 43 degrees south and 43 degrees north, and everything outside that zone is considered safe.

“Northern Europe including France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland are definitely on the safe side. Southern Europe, the southern part of North America, South Asia, Africa, Australia and also South America are still within the zone today,” he said.

The re-entry area covers huge parts of the Earth’s oceans, so any surviving pieces of the space station are most likely to end up at the bottom of the sea.

 
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Researchers in Australia have begun an ambitious task to learn more about the long-term impacts of head injuries suffered by athletes. This week, the Australian Sports Brain Bank was launched in Sydney, and experts are encouraging players who have participated in all levels of sport – whether or not they’ve had a head injury – to donate their brains to the cause after they die.

The Brain Bank has been set up to investigate links between concussion, head injuries and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE.  It is a neurodegenerative disease found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma.

The Australian study is being supported by American researchers, who set up a similar brain bank a decade ago.

Dr. Chris Nowinski, head of the Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation which has examined the brains of deceased National Football League players, says the presence of CTE among them is pervasive.

“Any contact sport where you receive repetitive brain trauma puts you at risk for this disease.  We do not know at what risk but we have seen CTE in 110 of the first 111 players that we have studied, which has really surprised us.”

Nowinski believes energy from blows to the head during competition causes brain tissue to move.  Symptoms of CTE include depression, aggression and memory loss, and can take years or decades to appear.

The cause of CTE has yet to be established, but the disease has prompted a class action lawsuit in the U.S.

Australia’s Brain Bank is a joint venture between Sydney University and the city’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.  It hopes to obtain 500 brains over the next 10 years.

 
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Chef Rob Morasco didn’t set out to make a planet-friendly burger.

But the 25 percent mushroom burger he created at food service company Sodexo not only has a lower carbon footprint, it’s also lower in calories, fat and salt.

It’s juicier, too.

“When you bite into it, it’s kind of like a flavor explosion,” Morasco said. “And you don’t taste the mushrooms, either.”

And because mushrooms are cheaper than beef, he could answer customer demand for antibiotic- and hormone-free burgers “without having to jack up the price,” he said.

Mushroom-blended burgers have been catching on among both chefs and environmentalists. In March, Sonic Drive-In became the first fast-food chain to offer them.

WATCH: These Burgers Are Better for the Planet, but You’d Never Know It

​2 million cars

Americans eat about 10 billion hamburgers each year, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI).

All those burgers take a toll on the planet.

Beef is “the most resource-intensive food that we commonly eat,” Richard Waite of WRI said.

Beef accounts for about half the greenhouse gases produced by the American diet, he added. Cows take far more feed, land and water than any other source of protein.

If every burger in America were blended with mushrooms, WRI estimates the greenhouse-gas savings would be like taking more than 2 million cars off the road.

It would save as much water as nearly 3 million American households use in a year. And it would reduce the demand for farmland by an area larger than the state of Maryland.

For the carnivore

Blended burgers are part of The Culinary Institute of America and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Menus of Change project, challenging chefs across the food industry to make their meals healthier and more sustainable.

Demand for meatless meals is growing along with rising health and environmental concerns. There are bean burgers, soy burgers, even beet-infused veggie burgers that “bleed.”

But it’s a limited market.

“The veggie burgers tend to cater to folks who identify as vegetarian or vegan, or actively want to be eating less meat,” Waite said.

On the other hand, blended burgers appeal to “the real carnivores, someone who really loves meat,” he added. “This is potentially a dish that could have broad mainstream appeal and also pretty big environmental benefits.”

Helps keep burgers juicy

Chefs say the mushrooms retain water, helping the burger stay juicy as it cooks.

Sonic Drive-In’s ads for its new Signature Slinger blended burger play up the juiciness and the lower calories.

“When you’re about something that is going to be better for you, it had better deliver the flavor first,” said Scott Uehlein, vice president for product innovation and development at Sonic Drive-In.

The company is piloting the burgers in a two-month trial run.

And the potential goes beyond burgers.

About 400 cafeterias, universities and hospitals are using Sodexo’s blended beef to prepare not only burgers, but lasagna, chili, meatballs, meatloaf and more. The company has adapted 30 popular recipes to use its mushroom blend.

“All those different things you can make with that product just like you would make with regular ground beef,” chef Morasco said.
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Most people prescribed antibiotics for sinus infections are on treatment courses of 10 days or longer even though infectious-disease doctors recommend five to seven days for uncomplicated cases, a U.S. study suggests.

Researchers examined data from a sample representing an estimated 3.7 million adults treated for sinusitis and prescribed antibiotics in 2016. Overall, 70 percent of antibiotics prescribed were for 10 days or longer, the study found.

“Anytime antibiotics are used, they can cause side effects and lead to antibiotic resistance,” said senior study author Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra, deputy director of the Office of Antibiotic Stewardship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

“This is why it is so important to only use antibiotics when they are needed and to use the right antibiotic for the minimum effective duration,” Fleming-Dutra said by email.

Common side effects of antibiotics can include rash, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea and yeast infections, she said. More serious side effects may include life-threatening allergic reactions and Clostridium difficile infection, which causes diarrhea that can lead to severe colon damage and death.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them and can make infections harder to treat.

​Relatively new guidelines

When antibiotics are prescribed for sinus infections, only five to seven days of therapy are needed for uncomplicated cases, when patients start to recover within a few days of starting treatment and if they don’t have signs that the infection has spread beyond the sinuses, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

These guidelines are relatively new, however, and it’s possible some of the longer courses of antibiotics prescribed in the study occurred because not all doctors have absorbed the new practice recommendations, Fleming-Dutra said. Prior to 2012, the IDSA recommended 10 to 14 days of antibiotics for sinus infections in adults.

In the study, no penicillin or tetracycline prescriptions were for five-day courses and only 5 percent of prescriptions were for seven-day courses of penicillins, tetracyclines or fluoroquinolones.

When researchers excluded azithromycin, an antibiotic that’s not recommended for sinus infections, they found that 91 percent of all antibiotic courses prescribed for sinus infections were for 10 days or longer.

The study didn’t examine whether or how the duration of antibiotics prescriptions affected treatment of sinus infections or the potential for side effects.

Researchers also focused only on acute sinus infections, and by excluding some cases where the type of infection was unclear, they may have left out some acute cases, the study team noted in AMA Internal Medicine.

It’s also possible that in some cases, doctors prescribed antibiotics for 10 days or longer and instructed patients to stop after five to seven days unless they were still experiencing symptoms, said Dr. Sharon Meropol, a researcher at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Medicine switch

One pitfall in this approach is that when patients improve slowly, it’s possible they’re infected with organisms that are resistant to the antibiotic prescribed, and that they would recover faster if they switched to a different antibiotic

instead of continuing the current one longer, Meropol said by email.

“Older .. acute bacterial sinusitis guidelines were written with the belief that if antibiotics were taken for shorter durations of time, that the bacteria would not be completely eradicated and that would risk persistent, recurrent

and antibiotic-resistant infections,” Meropol said.

“But the recommendations have changed on this because subsequent studies have shown the opposite is true — that in fact if the patient is responding to treatment, five to seven days is safe and is usually enough,” Meropol added. “A longer treatment is not usually needed.”
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Trouble is brewing for coffee lovers in California, where a judge ruled that sellers must post scary warnings about cancer risks. But how frightened should we be of a daily cup of joe? Not very, some scientists and available evidence seem to suggest.

Scientific concerns about coffee have eased in recent years, and many studies even suggest it can help health.

“At the minimum, coffee is neutral. If anything, there is fairly good evidence of the benefit of coffee on cancer,” said Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a nutrition expert at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The World Health Organization’s cancer agency moved coffee off the “possible carcinogen” list two years ago, though it says evidence is insufficient to rule out any possible role.

The current flap isn’t about coffee itself, but a chemical called acrylamide that’s made when the beans are roasted. Government agencies call it a probable or likely carcinogen, based on animal research, and a group sued to require coffee sellers to warn of that under a California law passed by voters in 1986.

The problem: No one knows what levels are safe or risky for people. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets acrylamide limits for drinking water, but there aren’t any for food.

“A cup of coffee a day, exposure probably is not that high,” and probably should not change your habit, said Dr. Bruce Y. Lee of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If you drink a lot of cups a day, this is one of the reasons you might consider cutting that down.”

Here’s what’s known about the risks.

The chemical

Start with the biggest known risk factor for cancer — smoking — which generates acrylamide. In the diet, French fries, potato chips, crackers, cookies, cereal and other high-carbohydrate foods contain it as a byproduct of roasting, baking, toasting or frying.

Food and Drug Administration tests of acrylamide levels found they ranged from 175 to 351 parts per billion (a measure of concentration for a contaminant) for six brands of coffee tested; the highest was for one type of decaf coffee crystals. By comparison, French fries at one fast-food chain ranged from 117 to 313 parts per billion, depending on the location tested. Some commercial fries had more than 1,000.

Even some baby foods contain acrylamide, such as teething biscuits and crackers. One brand of organic sweet potatoes tested as having 121 parts per billion.

What’s the risk?

The “probable” or “likely” carcinogen label is based on studies of animals given high levels of acrylamide in drinking water. But people and rodents absorb the chemical at different rates and metabolize it differently, so its relevance to human health is unknown.

A group of 23 scientists convened by the WHO’s cancer agency in 2016 looked at coffee — not acrylamide directly — and decided coffee was unlikely to cause breast, prostate or pancreatic cancer, and that it seemed to lower the risks for liver and uterine cancers. Evidence was inadequate to determine its effect on dozens of other cancer types.

The California law

Since 1986, businesses have been required to post warnings about chemicals known to cause cancer or other health risks — more than 900 substances are on the state’s list today — but what’s a “significant” risk is arguable.

Coffee sellers and other defendants in the lawsuit that spurred Thursday’s ruling have a couple of weeks to challenge it or appeal.

The law “has potential to do much more harm than good to public health,” by confusing people into thinking risks from something like coffee are similar to those from smoking, Giovannucci said.

The International Food Information Council and Foundation, an organization funded mostly by the food and beverage industry, says the law is confusing the public because it doesn’t note levels of risk, and adds that U.S. dietary guidelines say up to five cups of coffee a day can be part of a healthy diet.

Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society’s chief medical officer, said, “The issue here is dose, and the amount of acrylamide that would be included in coffee, which is really very small, compared to the amount from smoking tobacco. I don’t think we should be worried about a cup of coffee.”

Amy Trenton-Dietz, public health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the California ruling contrasts with what science shows.

“Studies in humans suggest that, if anything, coffee is protective for some types of cancer,” she said. “As long as people are not putting a lot of sugar or sweeteners in, coffee, tea and water are the best things for people to be drinking.”

This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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